Everton FC captain Phil Neville calls for response in Europe

EVERTON captain Phil Neville has conceded there is no time for his team-mates to wallow in the misery of their opening day thrashing by Arsenal as they have to get things right against Sigma Olomouc on Thursday.

EVERTON captain Phil Neville has conceded there is no time for his team-mates to wallow in the misery of their opening day thrashing by Arsenal as they have to get things right against Sigma Olomouc on Thursday.

David Moyes’ side are competing in European football’s secondary competition – now revamped as the Europa League having formerly been the Uefa Cup – for the third successive season.

In the previous two campaigns Everton have struggled at the first hurdle, going out to Standard Liege 12 months ago and squeezing past Ukrainian unknowns Metallist Kharkiv a year earlier.

This year’s revamped competition features more lucrative four-team home and away ‘Champions League-style’ groups and following Saturday’s 6-1 defeat to the Gunners – the worst opening day scoreline in Everton’s history – Neville knows there can be no margin for error against the Czechs, who netted five at Aberdeen in the previous round.

He said: “We have to get it right in Europe and we need to get back to basics. Show our strength, show our spirit, show our confidence, show our togetherness.

“That’s what has made us the fifth best team in England for the last few years – now is the test for us.”

Everton’s defeat to Arsenal not only saw them outclassed but outfought and Neville knows that is not good enough.

He said: “That’s not what you’d expect from an Everton team, it was totally out of character.

“I think we’ve got to take every criticism that comes our way because it’s well-deserved.

“In regards to a worst Everton performance I’ve been involved with, defensively it’s up there with Dinamo Bucharest away (when Everton lost 5-1 in the first round of the 2005/06 Uefa Cup) in terms of it being easy for players to get in and easy for players to score.

“That’s not Everton at all. That’s not the Everton that has shown the consistency over the past five years.

“We’ve been built on a solid foundation, we’ve been hard to beat. We weren’t hard to beat in this game.”

Neville refutes any suggestions, though, that the defeat was down to distractions caused by discussions about Joleon Lescott’s future.

He said: “Forget the speculation, forget the rubbish that everyone keeps talking about with Everton – that had nothing to do with what happened out there.

“It’s simple. If you don’t stay with men, if you don’t stay with runners and you don’t pick up men on set-pieces you get punished.

“Hopefully it’s just a one-off. We were playing against a top class team.

“It’s a kick up the backside without a doubt. If it happened every week you’d be worried but the last time that happened was four years ago.”

Neville admitted that the mood in the home dressing room was despondent but stressed that the team were in a stronger position than they were on the opening day of last season when Blackburn won 3-2 at Goodison.

He said: “One thing I do know is that we’re hurting and we’re taking responsibility for that performance.

“It’s not acceptable and the players don’t accept it. We talk about our famous spirit, we’ve got to show it now and get together.

“We’ve got four or five more players than we had at this stage last season.

“At 1-0 down we had a chance to make it 1-1 but we conceded two poor goals.

“I thought we played okay in the first half, I didn’t think we were too bad.

“But in the second half it was schoolboy defending.”

Meanwhile, despite being told by Everton that Lescott is not for sale, Manchester City manager Mark Hughes continues to try and talk up a deal, suggesting that there is “no point” in speaking to David Moyes directly.

The City boss said: “Our interest is not finished yet.The thing is we haven’t put this into the public domain. Everton did that on their website.”